Consumers plan to be highly engaged with brands on social media by 2026. Four in five say they will interact more or the same with branded content as they do now, according to The Social Media Content Strategy Report 2026. In response, 87% of marketers say they want their brand to appear on more social media networks this year.
But throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks is ineffective and burns teams out. Social media has become so fragmented and algorithms so personal, that marketers are increasingly less sure where their real audience really is. The report shows that real-time insights into what their audiences want to consume is the most important thing marketers say would make their strategies more effective.
We’re back with the latest edition of our series, @Me Next Time, where we invite Team Sprout and some of our favorite social experts to share what they really think about the latest industry trends and discourse.
This time we spoke to Paula Perez, Social Content Specialist at Oatly, to find out why brands don’t need to appear everywhere. What they need is better information about where their audience is and what they want to see. Spending time researching the Swedish company’s social presence, it becomes clear how well they understand their audience and the role their products play in their lives. You can watch our entire fireside chat with Perez on-demand.
What are audience insights on social media?
Social media audience insights They’re actionable insights that reveal who your audience really is, what they care about, and how they behave online. It’s important to remember that audience insights are not limited to quantifiable performance metrics. Instead, you analyze:
- What users are like talk about your brandproduct, industry and competitors (even if you are not tagged)
- Show and comment sentiment
- The demographic composition of your target group
- In which networks your audience likes to spend time and interact with brands
Perez explains: “We are big on qualitative statistics and data storytelling. We ask ourselves: are we reaching audiences we haven’t seen before? Are we receiving inbound messages from creators of new types of online communities? What is the response to our outbound responses on our partners’ pages? But we also look at reach and engagement to get hard numbers.”
Why social media audience insights are crucial
Brands are no longer built by advertising agencies. They are built by the public and shaped by the millions of moments that make up the patina online culture. Social audience insights are key to tapping into this parallel world and breaking through saturated social feeds algorithm fatigue.
But it’s not about dominating the conversation. As Perez describes, “We talk about it as if we were being invited into someone’s home. Our online audience has already created a space, created an atmosphere, and welcomed us. It’s not our job to rearrange their furniture or tell them how to host. Our job is to add value to the moment and respect the tone of their ‘home.’ That mindset defines everything about how we build community. We lead with intention and respect, remembering that we are participants (not directors) in the conversations people have about Oatly feeding.”
Here are the ways the Oatly team relies on social media insights to inform their social strategy.
Develop truly original content
Feeds are flooded with AI slop and lightning-fast trend cycles. Consumers are overstimulated. According to the Sprout Pulse survey Q4 2025human-generated content is the number one thing consumers want brands to prioritize on social in 2026.
Perez and his team went all-in on the human touch when cultivating the social rollout for Oatly’s Lookbook campaign, a couture-inspired series that highlights barista-level recipes.
“We partnered with cultural intelligence platform CultureLab to dive deep into the world of beverage trends. Additionally, we have an in-house barista team and a food and beverage department head who craft the beverages. Together they developed the Taste Report and tracked the recipes. On social media, our in-house team executed from start to finish. They had creative ideas inspired by online culture (i.e., ‘model-inspired polaroids’, matcha ping-pong, custom Oatly ice cubes) So many people commented We wondered if our creative was AI-generated, but it wasn’t.
Social audience insights gave the Oatly team the opportunity to creatively base their campaign on the emerging trends and cultural cues their audience cares about, from flavors like cardamom and rosemary to unexpected lattes like custard and chia seed pudding.
Find niche audiences within niche audiences
The internet is growing more and more niche. Most of us have different algorithms, based on our quirky hobbies, favorite TV shows and even favorite products. It’s impossible to determine what someone’s corner of the internet looks like based on demographics such as age or location.
Perez describes: “We never assume that a generation is a monolith, even from within Gen Zthere are subcultures within other subcultures. Social is so saturated right now that it can feel overwhelming to decode what is a real signal and what is just noise. So we look for the communities that genuinely love us, even though they seem completely unrelated. A recent partnership was with EF Pro Cycling. We featured their team in content cross-posted to their social accounts and received a lot of love from the cycling community for showcasing the sport during the Tour de France. Additionally, we realized that athletes love Oatly to help them carb load and fuel for their workouts. On the other end of the spectrum, we get so much love from the aesthetic “romanticizing lives” girls who always find creative ways to add Oatly to their matcha during their morning routines. These groups couldn’t be more different, but they are both passionate about Oatly.”
The Oatly team deeply researches these hyper-niche communities so they can build long-lasting relationships and credibility. “We filmed at the University of Alabama with students and cheerleaders. With girls from the city of Miami in nightclubs. With the cycling community across Europe. We dive deep into these niches, not to chase trends, but to understand which ones have the potential to produce our superfans and ambassadors,” Perez explains.
Ensure brand relevance in an ever-changing world
Consumer preferences for how and where brands appear online don’t change every few years, or even annually. Marketers must embrace new expectations every quarter (or more often) to keep pace with the culture.
Perez and the Oatly team have relied on audience insights to keep up with the constant evolution. “Our social activities look very different today than they did five years ago. When we first started gaining traction, especially in the US, people loved to see us buck trends (think Instagram captions that were essentially three-paragraph essays). Millennials loved disruption, and DTC brands are built to be the disruptor. But Gen Z? They set the tone and expect brands to follow. We never used to jump into random threads unless we were tagged or intentional invited. If we showed up. If it wasn’t asked, it would feel weird. People would say, ‘Oatly…why are you here?’ But now expectations have changed, especially on TikTok. When we’re late for a conversation, people cry out. “Oatly, you’re all late.” And they are right. The community now expects us to be part of the moment.”
To meet consumer demands to appear proactively and unsolicited in comment threads or conversations, many social teams adopt a newsroom modelgiving them access to audience insights that predict trends, spot emerging conversations and assess risk.
Social media audience insights are important for the entire business, not just marketing
The potential for social audience insights doesn’t stop with refining your content strategy. This data plays a crucial role in sharing social intelligence company-wide. By harnessing insights around customer behavior, expectations and emotions on social media, you can influence everything from product development to market expansion. This data analysis can shape the next product variant you release, the feature upgrades you prioritize, and the old items you decide to bring back.
That’s exactly what happened when Oatly launched their matcha oat drink in the EU after demand for the flavor profile reached fever pitch.
“The launch of matcha in the EU is one of my favorite examples of a time when community input shaped the direction of our product development. The explosion of matcha and custom drinks on social media in several markets including DACH, Spain and France created a huge demand. We always stay very closely involved with our product teams and regularly share feedback and trends we see online. We work with their own market research process and in this case we all knew the trend was too big to ignore.”
Social audience insights aren’t a substitute for other market research, but they can be a valuable (and quick) way to validate the signals your business is hearing in other locations.
To find your audience, you have to go deeper, not wider
Meaningful audience growth and resonance do not come from being everywhere. It comes from understanding where and how your brand belongs, and what your audience expects from you. As Oatly shows, social media audience insights give brands the clarity to prioritize the right networks, sub-niches and content strategies.
When to notice listen to their audience and acting on real-time signals, they not only create better content, but also develop better products. The future of social (and business) belongs to brands that trade more accounts for better intelligence.
Download to dive deeper into network-specific trends and consumer behavior The Social Media Content Strategy Report 2026.
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